Ashes of the Earth (38 page)

Hadrian
retreated into the shadows of the alley. It was nearly an hour before
a tall man entered the stable, five minutes before he left the
building. Hadrian followed him down the hill, grateful for the snow
that had begun to blow in from the lake. The drug dealer hurried to
get out of the elements, straight back to the smugglers' apartment
where Jansen had died.

The
old mill
had
a haunted air under the moonlight. Small dark shapes scurried across
the floor as he opened the door. He reached along the wall until he
found the hanging lantern, lit it, and moved up the narrow stairs.
Well-worn hemp sacks did indeed fill the feed bin, empty except for
the rectangular object in the last one.

In
the dim light he admired the framed painting, an expert rendering of
mergansers on a slow running takeoff toward the rising sun, then
looked out the window at the moon, bright enough for him to use the
forest paths. He returned the painting to the sack. It was time for
Jonah's present to be delivered.

An
hour later he laid the painting on the trestle table of Jonah's
dining room. Jori listened silently while he described its mysterious
connection to Fletcher's men, then she turned it over and pulled a
knife from her pocket. She pulled back the cover to reveal two sheets
of paper inside. Hadrian carefully laid them on the table and
arranged several candles around them before pointing to the upper
right corner of each. "Page thirty-three," he read, "and
page eighty seven." They were cut from a ledger, both sides
crowded with handwriting.

Jori
lifted the first page and began reading. "Franklin Bishop,"
she said. "Age fifty-six. Cause of death cardiac arrest."

"Jonathan
Hampden," Hadrian read from the second. "Age forty-nine.
Cause of death cardiac arrest."

The
first sheet was dated over a year earlier, the other three months
after that.

"Why?"
Jori wanted to know. "Why would someone steal death reports for
men who died of natural causes?"

"More
importantly," Hadrian asked, "why would Fletcher care if
they did? Who was he protecting?" Was he at last beginning to
glimpse the unknown players inside Carthage?

They
sat and read the full reports out loud. Both men had died of heart
attacks after consuming large dinners, and heavy quantities of
alcohol, at the same waterfront restaurant. One had been a
shipwright, the other a miller. They had no obvious family
connection. Their death examinations had been conducted by two
different doctors.

Hadrian
stared at the names again. "I knew them," he said with
sudden realization. "Or at least knew of
them.
Each was the head of his guild."

The
little cottage
a
block away from the hospital was surrounded by gardens, many planted
just with herbs but others just for the pleasure of their flowers.
Late-blooming asters and coneflowers swayed in the breeze. The last
golden leaves of elderberries drooped from the cold. Hadrian waited
in the darkness, watching the house, then circling it at a distance,
following the tracks in the shallow snow that led from the street to
a clump of evergreens at the side of the house. Squatting, he studied
the packed snow where someone had stood and stomped their feet from
the cold, not missing the half-dozen fresh cigarette butts by the
tracks of heavy-treaded shoes. He rolled one of the butts in his
fingers, knowing from the touch of the parchment it was a Bookstick.

He
rounded the house once more, making sure there were no other tracks,
pausing to study the well-lit kitchen, then climbed up onto the front
porch. Testing the front door, and finding it locked, he retrieved
the key from the lintel of the front window.

Two
of those at the kitchen table leapt up in alarm as he entered. Emily
stayed seated. "I don't recall leaving my door open," she
said, but made no effort to conceal her weary smile. She did not seem
surprised to see him. Jori had visited the hospital.

"There
is a community of criminals on the north shore," he said
abruptly. "They mean to take over Carthage."

No
one spoke. The two men, both tall lean figures with muscular hands
and leathery faces, dropped back into their chairs. Hadrian
recognized them now. Melville and Wilmot, the farmers who served on
the Council with Emily.

It
was the doctor who stirred first. She rose and gestured Hadrian
closer. "First let me see how your arm and shoulder are
healing," she said, motioning for him to pull his jacket and
shirt off. Only after she had leaned close to the wounds, uttering
low syllables of approval as she pushed and stretched the skin around
the scars, did she pull out a chair for Hadrian. "Only you could
find a way to sink a ship a second time," she said, then
confirmed that Hadrian was acquainted with the two Council members.
They were stalwart, trustworthy men who Buchanan had originally
nominated for service on the Council because they would be quiet,
backbench members who would always support his government. Yet here
they were, meeting with the independent-minded Emily, far from
Buchanan's scrutiny.

"From
the beginning," Emily instructed him as she passed a mug of tea.
"First you took my mare to the camps. Fortunately she found her
way back without being eaten. That's all I know."

"New
Jerusalem," Hadrian began. "That's what they call the camps
now. The promised land." He choose not to offer every detail of
his past month but spoke of the smugglers, the
Anna,
Kinzler's mysterious walled compound, and his discovery of St.
Gabriel. He spoke for nearly an hour, accepting more tea, then
thick-sliced brown bread and butter. He hesitated about proceeding
when he recognized the pain and anger on the faces of his audience.
But there was no real surprise. They had harbored suspicions of the
truth.

At
last he rose to stand at the window and survey the grounds outside.
"How often have you been meeting like this?"

"Three
or four times," Emily said. "Why?"

Hadrian
tossed onto the table the Bookstick butt he'd retrieved from the
snow. "Someone has been watching. He wore police shoes. There
may be several on the force who smoke these but only one I know for
certain."

The
farmers cast worried glances at Emily. "Bjorn!" she
exclaimed. Then she rose and pulled shut the curtains. "Buchanan
is furious at us. He selected Van Wyck's replacement but we have
withheld our approval."

"The
head of the millers' guild," Hadrian confirmed with a nod. "On
what grounds do you protest?"

"Officially,
we need none. The vote has to be unanimous, or we go to a full
election."

Why,
he asked himself, was it suddenly so important for the millers to be
represented on the Council? "Unofficially?"

Emily
grimaced. "The drugs are spreading. I have half a dozen patients
with hallucinations or in comas. Buchanan has started proceedings to
exile anyone whose eyes bleach out. They're mutants, he says,
technically covered by the expulsion laws." She glanced
uncomfortably at the tall farmer to her right. "Wilmot's
daughter is one of them. And no one knows anything about this man
from the miller's guild. He came in from some distant farm, was
raised to guild master overnight when the last one died unexpectedly.
There was talk of bribery."

"The
last one," Hadrian said. "A man named Hampden."

Emily
nodded. "He died more than a year ago."

"A
few months later the head of the shipwrights' guild also died. Both
of heart attacks. And both their replacements have been raised to the
Council." He reached into his coat and pulled out the two death
reports.

The
doctor, recognizing the format of the pages, slowly reached for them.
"What have you done?" she demanded, heat rising in her
voice. "You can't just—"

"I
didn't cut these from the death lists. Someone else did. And the
jackals have been trying to find them ever since." Hadrian
quickly explained what he knew about the reports. "They were
hidden at a house behind the square. White clapboard with a stone
chimney and a white fence."

Hadrian
watched as Emily's face tightened. "I know who lives in that
house," she grimly declared. "He's on duty at the hospital
tonight."

Thirty
minutes later Hadrian sat with Emily in her office at the hospital, a
large leather-bound book opened in front of them on her desk.

They
had quickly located the official death reports. The pages were not
missing from the book although the two pages in the ledger were in a
different handwriting. Both had been signed by Dr. Jonathan Salens,
owner of the house off the square.

"It
makes no sense," Emily said after reading through the notices in
the book. "Salens signed the original reports in the book and
someone made duplicates over the names of two other doctors."

Hadrian
pushed down on the ledger book, pressing the pages flat to the
binding. "No," he said after a quick inspection. "These
pages from his house were the originals. They were cut out and the
new ones replaced them." He pointed out how new sheets had been
inserted and secured with expert stitches. "No one would notice.
No one would care. Routine reports. Routine deaths signed by one of
your doctors."

"Except
Salens was not the examining doctor," Emily growled. She
consulted a pocket watch. "He should be out of surgery now,"
she said, and pushed back her chair to leave the office. Hadrian bent
and reread every word of the reports, then took a seat in the shadows
behind the door.

Emily
returned moments later, engaged in pleasantries with the thin,
black-haired doctor he'd seen tending Jamie Reese weeks earlier.
Salens, he recalled now, had quickly moved away when Hadrian had
asked about the fisherman, had been the one who had reported Reese's
death as an industrial accident. The atmosphere abruptly changed as
she closed the door and pointed to the ledger on her desk, opened to
the first of the reports. "Fabricating official records is a
crime."

"So
the police found the painting," Salens said in a tight voice. "I
told them not to trouble themselves when they asked about it."

"If
there is any hope of you not becoming a hospital janitor by this time
tomorrow, you'd better start explaining right now."

Salens
sank into a chair. His good looks seemed to fade as Emily dropped the
two stolen pages beside the ledger. "Two men died of natural
causes," he said cautiously. "The reports in the ledger are
accurate."

"You
did not conduct the examinations. Why then is your name on them?"

When
Salens did not reply Hadrian stepped from the shadows. "Because
the changed reports are in his handwriting."

Salens
stared at Hadrian with resentment. "I wouldn't sign another
doctor's name," he said stiffly. "That would be wrong."

A
bitter laugh escaped Emily's lips.

"They
are the same reports," protested Salens.

"No,"
Hadrian said. "There are several differences. In your reports
you left out the fact that each ate at the same restaurant before his
death. The Blue Gander. And you made sure a symptom was left out of
the official record. Blue-black discoloration of the skin along the
forearms."

Salens
stared into his folded hands. "They both died of cardiac arrest.
None of what is written is a lie."

"It
became a lie by its omissions," Hadrian corrected.

"Who
told you to do this?" Emily demanded.

"No
one."

"Very
well," Emily said. "I will send for the police. Lieutenant
Kenton would find such a case of great interest. The governor will
probably know by morning."

"No!"
Salens exclaimed. "You can't!"

"Then
who told you to do this?" Emily pressed. "What else have
you done?"

"It
isn't like that," Salens said. "I never ..." He
glanced up at Emily with a desolate expression. "There was a
girl at the tavern behind the Blue Gander. A working girl. I'd lost a
lot of money to the owner at the poker games there, more than I could
afford. I was going to lose my house. The owner said he had a way for
me to pay it off, said he had a girl, his best girl, who would be out
of work for months if something wasn't done."

Emily
threw up her hands. "If she were sick she could have come to the
hospital."

Salens
looked down.